Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton Page B

human
sacrifice? Another astonishing burial
was found in 2002 at Amesbury, 2.8
miles southeast of Stonehenge, and has
become known as either the Amesbury
Archer or the King of Stonehenge. The
rich goods found with this burial indicate a high-status individual, and include five Beaker pots, 16 beautifully
worked flint arrowheads, several boar
tusks, two sandstone wristguards (to
protect the wrists from the bow string
of a bow and arrow), a pair of gold hair
ornaments, three tiny copper knives,
and a flint-knapping kit and metalworking tools. Not only are the gold
objects the oldest ever found in Britain, but this person may have been one
of the earliest metalwokers in the islands. Tests on the skeleton show that
the Archer was a strongly built man
aged between 35 and 45, though he had
an abscess on his jaw and had suffered
an accident, which had torn his left
knee cap off. But the most surprising
element of the burial was yet to come.

    © Wessex Archaeology
    Flint arrowheads found with the buried
Archer.

    Research using oxygen isotope
analysis on the Archer's tooth enamel
found that he had grown up in the Alps
region, in either Switzerland, Austria,
or Germany. Analysis of the copper
knives showed that they had come
from Spain and France. This is incredible evidence for contact between cultures in Europe 4,200 years ago. Could
the unusually rich burial of the King
of Stonehenge, obviously an important
person of high rank, mean that he
played an important part in the construction of the first stone-built monument on the site? A second male
    burial, dating from the same period as
the Archer, was located near to his
grave. This skeleton, which bone
analysis has shown may be the Archer's
son, had been buried with a pair of gold
hair ornaments in the same style as
the Archer's, though for some reason
these had been left inside the man's
jaw. Oxygen isotope analysis revealed
that this man had grown up in the area
around Salisbury Plain, though his late
teens may have been spent in the Midlands or northeast Scotland.
    The Boscombe Bowmen are a group
of Early Bronze Age burials, found in
a single grave at Boscombe Down,
close to Stonehenge. Known as bowmen due to the amount of flint arrowheads found in their grave, the burial
consists of seven individuals: three
children, a teenager, and three men,
all apparently related to each other.
Finds from the grave are similar in
character to that of the Amesbury
Archer and include an unusually high
amount of Beaker pottery. Again, it
was the teeth that provided the clue
as to where these people originated.
In this case, the men grew up in Wales
but migrated to southern Britain in
childhood. Given that the Boscombe
Bowmen were roughly contemporary
with the transport and erection of the
Welsh bluestones at Stonehenge, it is
believed by many researchers that they
may have accompanied the stones on
their 186 mile trek to Salisbury Plain.
The burials of the Amesbury Archer
and the Boscombe Bowmen, then,
offer fascinating evidence for some
of the people who were involved in the
task of constructing Stonehenge, but
what purpose did the enigmatic and
unique monument serve?

    © Wessex Archaeology
    Detail of the Archer burial with
interpretation of the burial goods.
    Because Stonehenge is aligned to
the midsummer sunrise/midwinter
sunset, many reseachers (most notably English-born astronomer Gerald
Hawkins) have claimed that a number
of astronomical alignments are present
at the site. However, subsequent analysis of the data assembled to support
Hawkins' theory has shown that many
of the supposed astronomical alignments were arrived at by joining together features from different periods,
as well as natural pits and holes that
were not part of the monument.
    The most important thing to remember about Stonehenge is that
although it is a unique structure, it was
not an isolated monument. Stonehenge
    grew to be the focal